Spotlight & Giveaway: The Stargazer of Nantucket by Julie Gerstenblatt

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Julie Gerstenblatt to HJ!

Hi Julie and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, The Stargazer of Nantucket!

Thank you for having me!
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

The Stargazer of Nantucket is an epic seafaring story in which my main character, Winifred Starbuck, stows away on a clipper ship in 1851, surprising her sea captain father and merchant mother and embarking on the adventure of a lifetime, learning the costs and benefits of grabbing life by the helm.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

I love when Winnie hides in a rowboat and glimpses Stargazer, her parents’ clipper ship, for the first time. “Winnie peeked her head out from under the muslin tarp.” “Oh!” she exclaimed. For there she was, an enormous, three-masted, square-rigged clipper, with a hull designed to slice through waves and a remarkable reputation for speed: the most glorious ship Winifred Starbuck had ever seen.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• Nell Starbuck, Winnie’s mother, was a major character in early drafts of my first novel, Daughters of Nantucket, who needed to be cut out, so I sent her off to sea with her captain husband. You can find one sentence about that on page 75 of the paperback. I created the story of The Stargazer of Nantucket completely around that sentence.
• The voyage that Stargazer takes from Nantucket to San Francisco is based on the maiden voyage of Flying Cloud, a McKay clipper that held the world record for 135 years as the fastest ship that ever sailed the seas.
• I dedicate this novel to my son and his best friend from college, Andrew and Arthur. Why? Because they helped me get unstuck when I was really struggling with the novel, by pinpointing Winnie’s motivation and greatest desire: to go to sea. “You’re writing a Moana story,” Arthur said. And it was a major a-ha! Of course! Suddenly, everything I was doing made sense.

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

I don’t want to reveal too much, but let’s just say that there’s a using-you-to-liking you scheme involved! I love this section of the book because it shows Winnie swimming in uncharted waters, so to speak, involved in a relationship that she can’t totally control.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

I cried while writing the entire end of the book, because it is a culmination of a huge journey, both for my colorful cast of characters – and for myself! I can’t share a snippet because there are spoilers, so just trust me!

Readers should read this book….

If you love books that feel like movies, with a cinematic scope that immerse you in a world unlike your own, totally transported from your reality, this one’s for you. With a great cast of characters, including a stubborn and brave heroine, The Stargazer Of Nantucket is a real escape – filled with danger and a lot of fun. Readers who enjoyed The Frozen River will like this epic adventure, but you could also be new to historical stories and jump right in.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I am writing a second-chance romance set on Nantucket in the summers of 1989 and 2024, which will be published in the spring of 2028.
 
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: We’re giving away two copies of THE STARGAZER OF NANTUCKET (U.S. based only)

To enter Giveaway, please share this post on your Socials and Leave a comment below to this Q: When you were 18, did you ever lie to your parents about something kind of big – or something that felt big at the time? What happened next? Looking back, how do you feel now about the choices you made then, and how did this event shape you?

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✨ Giveaway closes 3 days from the date this post is published.
  

Excerpt from The Stargazer of Nantucket:

Aboard the Shooting Star
May 18, 1838
This is the story of a mother, a father, a daughter, and a ship.
The ship set sail from Nantucket and navigated the seas in
search of fortune. The husband captained the vessel with skill and
speed. In China, the merchant wife purchased tea and silk and porcelain
and carpets and furniture and more and more tea to sell in
America for incredible profits.
When they departed from the harbor at Canton, the mother,
the father, and the daughter were happy. The father had shown off
his beautiful ship and family to the other sea captains and merchants.
The mother had found a superior supplier for ginger and
had procured the lowest price for the freshest tea of the season.
The daughter, having just that very day turned from four fingers old
to five—a
whole hand! So big!—was happy because she was on an adventure with her parents. She was happy because she was always happy at sea.
The ship, too, was happy, weighed down as she was with rare and
prized commodities from the far side of the world, her sails filled
with wind, the American flag proudly waving from her stern. While
spending several months in port as the merchant wife bartered and
made her deals, the ship had been caulked and tarred and mended,
her sails repaired and her hull tended to by the captain husband and his crew. Together, they had survived typhoons, hurricanes, and
the doldrums. Together, they would head home.
Only, sometimes, a happy story gets interrupted. Sometimes, even
on a happy ship, a sailor goes mad, losing his mind from a potent
combination of drink and opium and isolation, and it drives him to a
deranged act.
“Get me off this ship!” the madman cried, his eyes bloodshot and
face hollow in the moonlight.
It was a calm and balmy night. The ship had recently passed Sumatra
and was charting its course through the Java Sea. After dinner,
the mother, father, and daughter had joined the crew of thirty
men on the deck. There had been revelry, with the redheaded steward
teaching the golden-haired
daughter yet another shanty, and
the daughter telling a spooky ghost tale, delighting the crew more
than frightening them with her lisp and her innocent emerald eyes.
A sailor with wild black hair and a tiny black dog danced a jig,
and the girl and her mother danced with them. Her father played
the fiddle.
And then the madman had demanded to disembark. “Now!” he
said, and “I must go now!” And when the redheaded steward and the
cook named Cook and even the nasty third mate who nobody liked
tried to subdue the sailor and lock him in the brig, he fended off their
grasp and pulled a knife from his sleeve. “Now, you bastards, now!”
As the crew decided what to do to rid themselves of this
madman—Head
back to Jakarta? Push on to Bali? Let him go adrift
in a lifeboat?—the
crazed sailor grabbed ahold of the daughter and
disappeared into the belly of the ship, the girl’s screams echoing
through the night.
The madman jiggered open the iron lock on the door of the ship’s
hold using the tip of his knife and slipped inside. He dropped the
daughter to the hay-covered
floor and barricaded them in with
crates of potatoes, bags of flour and grain, and a giant wooden desk
commissioned especially for the governor of Massachusetts. “Be
quiet!” he yelled at the daughter. “Stop crying!”
But now he wanted to cry, too, confused and maniacal as he was. He inhaled and exhaled deeply, trying to make his addled mind
think. For what had he gotten himself into? Locked in the hold with
the captain’s little girl? It would be the death of him.
There were shouts from the hallway outside, attempts to break
down the door. The girl’s cries turned to whimpers. She crawled
away on hands and knees and the mad sailor lost sight of her in the
dark room.
No matter. What he needed now was a gun. Ammunition. Feeling
his way with his hands, he began to search for the right crate.
He knew the captain kept a cache of weapons here, should the ship
ever be attacked by pirates or mutineers. Was he a mutineer? No,
he wasn’t trying to take over control of the ship. He just wanted to
leave. But maybe, by causing this chaos, he was indeed a mutineer?
He would save that question for another time. Ah! He found it. The
crate with munitions. Although he couldn’t read, he had helped load
this crate onto the ship many months ago and recognized the black
markings on top.
Hiding behind some wooden chests on the other side of the room,
the daughter started to hum, the tune of the new shanty fresh in her
mind, the humming soothing. It wasn’t one of her mother’s lullabies,
but it would have to do. Her song echoed through the high-ceilinged
chamber, bouncing off the crates of exported tea and exotic fruits,
elaborately carved lacquered furniture and beautiful, hand-woven
textiles. The Chinese goods hid the daughter from view and further
confounded the madman.
“Stop your singing, child!” the madman yelled.
And the daughter did stop singing. But not because she wished
to obey him. Rather because, through the grated skylight above, she
could see her mother looking down at her, a lantern in her hand.
Mother! she almost called out.
But her mother pressed her pointer finger to her lips. Shhh.
Shhh, the girl pantomimed back.
Stay put, the mother mouthed, her palm out flat. Don’t move.
The daughter nodded. She would stay put. She wouldn’t move.
She would listen to her mother.
And then, someone broke a small hole in the wall using a wooden
beam like a battering ram. The madman loaded a bullet into the
pistol and cocked the handle. Maybe he could beat this. Maybe he
could be free.
But it was a small hole, only big enough for a tiny dog to jump
through. The man laughed as the pup yipped away and tried to bite
his ankles. From the other side of the wall, the men kept striking the
wood until the hole enlarged enough for one man to snake his way
in and rush toward the madman.
The madman shot at the sailor, the one with the wild black hair,
the owner of the annoyingly yippy pup, but his aim was off, and he
ended up shooting the sailor in the leg.
The sailor fell to the floor and groaned, bleeding.
“Open the door for us, you lucky son of a bitch!” another sailor
shouted to the injured crew member.
The sailor crawled toward the door, removing the barricade as
quickly as possible so that his mates could enter and end this.
Knowing that a swarm of sailors would arrive any moment, the
madman tried to grab more bullets, but his hands were shaking
badly and he ended up dropping the gun. He dashed to the other
side of the room and slid into a corner behind a case of kumquats,
almost bumping into the little girl.
Now the daughter was unsure what to do. Stay put? Listen to her
mother, even still?
And then, from above, another sound: the hatch with its grated
skylight was yanked from its metal hinges. Both the madman and
the daughter looked up.
“Mama!” the girl cheered, reverting back to the babyish name she
had called her mother before turning five fingers old.
“My darling,” the mother said, jumping onto a stack of crates piled
high. She stepped down and reached out her arms.
But before the two could embrace, the madman stepped between
them and once again procured his knife. He wasn’t so mad as to kill
the child, no. But kill the mother? Why not?
The mother, having so very much to live for, would not die tonight.
She reached into the right-hand pocket of her beautiful, fine silk
dress, pulled out a small pistol, and shot the madman in the heart.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

From award-winning author Julie Gerstenblatt, an epic tale of adventure on the high seas, a spunky stowaway, and a family confronting the past to secure their future.

Massachusetts, 1851

Winifred Starbuck wants only one thing: to join her parents on their final merchant voyage—from Nantucket Island to bustling San Francisco, then across the glittering Pacific to the distant ports of China. Yet renowned trade captains Nell and Peter Starbuck have forbidden their daughter from coming aboard on the adventure of a lifetime. So Winnie does what any strong-willed eighteen-year-old would do: she stows away.

Once the ship sets sail, Winnie is plunged into turbulent waters, treachery, and the thrill of life on the high seas. As she drifts farther from shore, and closer to fabled Canton port, she uncovers a long-buried secret—one that reveals the truth behind her parents’ desperate fear. And as she continues to chart her own course, she’ll have to plumb the depths of her courage to take on a world far bigger—and more dangerous—than she ever imagined.
Book Links:  Amazon | B&N |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Julie Gerstenblatt holds a doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction from Teachers College, Columbia University. Her essays have appeared in The Huffington Post and Cognoscenti, among others. When not writing, Julie is a college essay coach, as well as a producer and on-air host for A Mighty Blaze. A native New Yorker, Julie now lives in coastal Rhode Island with her family and one very smart shichon poo.
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